Taiwanese Duck and Ginger Hot Pot

A warming duck and ginger hotpot for a stopover in Taipei

On my way to Vancouver I stopped over in Taipei for a few hours and met a friend there for dinner.

Unfortunately my flight was delayed by almost an hour, but I managed to make up for the time by rushing out of the plane at Taoyuan International Airport. I grabbed a cart to put my two hand carry luggage, which helped me breeze down the long corridor.

Vermicelli on the left, emperor vegetables, right

Then picking up my bags again we walked through a temperature check and to ensure we did not contaminate Taiwan, we walked on an elevated platform that was covered in artificial turf that had some sanitiser for the soles of our shoes.

After this walkway we arrived at passport control -- which hardly had any queues! I was amazed I was out of there in minutes. So was my friend who picked me up at the Arrivals area.

He insisted on taking me to eat a Taiwanese dish -- duck and ginger hotpot. It was pouring rain but a good excuse to warm up with this food, particularly with ginger!

We went to a Bawei location near the airport and it was pretty much an open-air restaurant, though it was completely covered, just the area facing the street was completely open, with yellow lanterns hanging outside advertising the name of the place.

There were many low tables with a hole in the middle and stools surrounding it, so it was almost like crouching, but not uncomfortable.

Tick off your orders here

We were given a sheet with ingredients on it to tick off, while a man first brought some charcoal that was heated up and placed them in the hole in the table, followed by a big clay pot filled with the duck soup, mostly duck bones, and big chunks of ginger. Some mushrooms were already added.

While we waited for raw ingredients to arrive, we had a plate of vermicelli, thin rice noodles tossed with sesame oil, a signature dish of this place. 

Unfortunately this particular place didn't have any duck blood! But we had other items like emperor vegetables, tofu, duck intestines, and fish dumpling wrappers. 

The meat from chopped up duck was quite tough and hard to extract from the bone, but the soup was delicious and surprisingly the ginger cooking in the pot for so long did not make the broth particularly spicy. It did hit the spot for me, being a rainy night and after traveling for three weeks the gingery soup helped me re-energise for my upcoming long-haul flight home.